Shopping rant:

It's fall, a time of year I seem to always start to think about my wardrobe and my general trend of apathy about Fashion and how maybe I should at least make an effort to do something about it. It's generally a bad time of year for me to start thinking about Fashion because I can't wear any of the olives and oranges that make up the Fall Fashion Palette. I had my "colors" done, once, a million years ago; the person doing them told me I was a "true luminant summer" but I find myself gravitating to the dark blues and reds of the "winter" palette. Whatever.

After five plus years, and this past spring and summer spent installing and developing the garden, my trusty Docs are getting a little, well, worn. I suppose after 5 years of daily tromping, I might be entitled to a new pair of shoes. And I thought maybe I'd attempt to branch out. Try some alternative shoe that might be a little less... utilitarian... than my Docs.

Macy's downtown was having a Shoe Diva event, which I mostly stumbled upon by accident. Appetizers, mock-tails, a dj spinning old Cyndi Lauper and Madonna tunes, and a "Buy $100 worth of regular priced shoes and get $25 off!" An absurd number of shoes, filling about half of the first floor, most of which had very high heels. I found one pair that (a) they had in my size, (b) did not have a spindly heel, (c) could have worked equally well with my jeans or with my "better" pants, and (d) had enough of a gripping sole that I wouldn't need to worry about falling when walking down Seattle's hills during the winter. What was it? A pair of Doc Martens.

Oh well. I tried.

Caitlyn was jumping down the stairs this morning, one at a time, saying, "And jumped and jumped and jumped and jumped," as she went. Being the bookish person I am, I thought perhaps she was referencing Are You My Mother? ("The egg jumped and jumped and jumped.") So, I asked her if she had a baby bird inside her.

"No. A bunny."

At the time, it seemed delightfully silly and a brilliant joke. I laughed. She laughed. And now, I can't seem to remember why... Some jokes are like that, I guess.

Evolution of language (or at least of the pronunciation of the language):

Caitlyn used to say "fan-gees" for "sandwich". Today I discovered that her word for "sandwich" had the initial "s" sound, which made me realize that she's been saying "fandawich" instead of "fan-gees" for a while now.

For lunch, we had grilled cheese "fandawich", some with "potatoes" (Caitlyn's word for "tomatoes" - yes, it's confusing), which made our fingers messy, so we needed a "napkawin".

The garden is winding down. I dug out the last of the potatoes today and wished, again, that I'd been keeping track of how many pounds we grew. I gave today's collection of green beans to the neighbors, since I've decided that 5 quarts in the freezer is enough. There are more than 2 pints of sun-dried tomatoes in the fridge, and bowls of tomatoes on the counter waiting to be converted into pasta sauce. Ian is responsible for eating the paprika and mariachi peppers - they've both turned out to be too hot for me. Tomorrow, I'll check on the two apples on the apple tree and see if they are ripe.

Caitlyn and I went to the zoo yesterday for what is likely going to be our last visit until spring. The zoo is open in the winter, it's just not a whole lot of fun to be wandering around out there in 40 degree weather. And our animal-viewing luck was really, really good. We saw the brown bears getting lunch (when a bear eats a cantaloupe, it somehow manages to scrape all the yummy fleshy parts out and leave the rind - not something I'd expect from bear jaws), the grey wolves (for the first time), the giraffes when it was time to cross the path back to the giraffe barn for dinner (so they walked by about 10 feet away from us), and several of the smaller monkeys who were actually up and out and doing stuff. We even managed to catch penguin feeding time.

The highlight for me (not really sure what Caitlyn thought - she has a thing for giraffes, elephants and penguins), though, was the tiger cub. Although perhaps "cub" is just a technicality now as she's about 10 months old and recognizable as a cub only if you have some idea of how large the adult tigers at the zoo are. This was the first time I've seen a tiger chase it's tail... she's still a kitten. Large and fast and deadly but a beautiful, playful kitten.

I don't suppose it came as a surprise to anyone that the President has declared his troop surge a success. He is, after all, apparently incapable of admitting fallibility. And I suppose it was a success, if the goals were to continue racking up Iraqi and US casualties, further distress tensions with Iran, and generally destroy whatever remained of any good feelings toward the US from the rest of the world.

Since it's too much to hope that the current administration might ever see or admit to their mistakes, it falls to Congress to deny funding for continuing this bungled endeavor. Congress should develop some spine and actually stand up to the President instead of merely talking about standing up. Congress should make an official, formal apology to Iraqis, the UN, and the rest of the world for permitting and continuing this sad affair. Congress should immediately begin the long and expensive process of sensibly withdrawing from Iraq while simultaneously making available the support and assistance Iraqis might request for rebuilding their infrastructure. The US made this mess and we should have some role in cleaning it up. The difference is that we would engage in no combat activities except guard duty and be actively restoring electricity and other services to the Iraqi population.

Yes, there will still be violence. The Shia and the Sunnis will not stop trying to kill each other just because the US is withdrawing. But we can, and should, remove American aggression as an excuse for those attacks and as a justification for terrorist recruitment.